The location of advertisements is of prime importance to advertising agencies. Likewise the location of shops is of prime importance to retailers. The location of an advertisement hoardings can effect there value and the price that companies are willing to pay for their advertisements to be placed on that hoarding. For example, a hoarding that is located in a busy city centre square will have more value than one located on a quiet street or one that is partially obscured by other buildings. It is also important to retailers that their shop fronts have the potential to be noticed to entice in shoppers.
Prior art methods to determine the number of potential viewers comprise manually performing street surveys to count the number of passing vehicles or pedestrians.
EP 1 376 058 provides a method of collecting market research information of mobile consumers moving through a geographical region. The method uses the data collected from mobile computing platforms such as GPS units or other navigation systems to identify which of the platforms are located within or passing through an advertising zone. This method is not particularly accurate as it only determines if a person is located within an advertising zone whether there was a chance of them seeing the advertising or not.